‘I don’t want to get up on a soapbox. I don’t want to be a junior Bob Dylan or Phil Ochs. I wasn’t trying to introduce protest songs to Nashville.’ : After Flying for So Many Years, Chris Hillman Is ‘Running’

One minute Chris Hillman was lifting weights in the garage he has converted into a gymnasium at his home in Ventura. The next minute he held a pencil and paper and was scribbling the words to a song about the suffering and persecution endured by illegal aliens.

Then there was the day that Hillman, whose Desert Rose Band is the latest venture in one of the most noteworthy careers in folk-rock and country-rock, went out for a ride on his bicycle. Soon the man who was a founding member of both the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers found himself writing an eloquent song about the homeless.

But Hillman says it wasn’t physical exertion that led to the spurt of topical songwriting that shows up on “Running,” the excellent new album by the Desert Rose Band. (If that were the case, Hillman conceivably could enter a marathon and cross the finish line with enough material to rival Woody Guthrie.) More than anything, Hillman said, it was a matter of being a father concerned about the kind of world his children will inherit.

“I’ve become so much more involved now in my older years than in the (previous) 10 years,” Hillman said over the phone this week from Nashville. “I have two children (with a third on the way), and I worry about how things are going to be when they grow up. I guess I’m just being the parent who’s wondering what kind of place are these kids going to have.”

Hillman, 43, said he didn’t deliberately set out to write political material for the second album by the Desert Rose Band, which plays Monday night at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana. “I don’t want to get up on a soapbox. I don’t want to be a junior Bob Dylan or Phil Ochs. I wasn’t trying to introduce protest songs to Nashville. Far be it from me.”

But in “Our Songs,” the statement of purpose that ends the new album, Hillman and songwriting partner Steve Hill set out a simple but ambitious goal--one that country music, with its tendency to confuse formulas with traditions, often loses sight of: “Let us sing our songs the way they’re meant to be, our troubles and trials in three-part harmony.” In other words, write songs that matter, that will honestly express what is on the singer’s mind and, no doubt, strike a resonance in the minds of listeners.

Hillman said it wasn’t the weights he was lifting that prompted him to write “For the Rich Man,” the song about the troubles of Central American immigrants. It was the weight on his mind from seeing “El Norte,” a sobering film about Guatemalan political refugees who make their agonizing way to the United States, only to be exploited.

And it wasn’t the exercise Hillman got while riding his bike in Ventura that led to “Homeless,” but something he saw along the way: “There was this 30-year-old woman, with a sleeping bag and all of her belongings in a shopping cart. She didn’t have that look of insanity or psychosis or drug addiction. You could see it in her eyes” that she was not demented, only shocked and bewildered by her plight.

The bluegrass-tinged lament tells in detail the story of a woman and her children forced to live in a car after her husband loses his job and abandons them. “Homeless” ends with a simple plea for decency worthy of a Woody Guthrie--a plea that has special relevance in Santa Ana, where city officials have adopted a policy of seizing and disposing of the belongings that homeless people hide in city parks.

In this land of milk and honey, we share with all who need,

Except the ones outside our door, the ones we cannot see.

It’s the proud, the true, the faithful, left out in the cold,

It’s people just like you and me at the end of the road.

In “Our Songs,” Hillman laments that the idealism that spurred pop music in the mid-’60s, when the Byrds emerged with the first folk-rock anthems, has given way to a music industry in which “the road is paved with gold if you do all that you’re told.” The song is a call for a reassertion of ‘60s ideals, in time to help a younger generation that is, according to the song’s lyrics, “reaching out for something they can’t see/They can’t hear it on the radio or watching MTV.”

“I miss the compassion and caring young people had in the ‘60s,” Hillman said, even if that commitment was sometimes expressed in infantile ways. “All of a sudden in 1975, the Vietnam War ended and it stopped. What can we do through music? What can we do as a country band from Los Angeles? We can be honest and play music and make people more aware” of real-life situations, whether the issues be social or emotional.

That sort of honesty is gaining ground in country music, Hillman thinks. “There’s a lot of substance coming into it,” he said, mentioning such artists as the O’Kanes, Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett. “It’s not just the cheating and truck-driving ‘I’m going to go into the bar and get drunk’ ” themes, which have led to the stereotype of country music as a rigid, unchanging musical form.

By choosing to play country music--though often with a rock band’s drive--the Desert Rose Band is trying to overcome that stereotype and reach people who don’t consider themselves fans of country.

“It’s a matter of educating the public,” Hillman said. “Forget the title, listen to the music. People aren’t going for that ‘Hee-Haw’ mentality. Give them some substance, and people will react. It’s just an awareness campaign. There’s a lot of people who, once they hear it, will like it.”

With its blend of tight vocal harmonies and crisp musicianship, the six-man Desert Rose Band isn’t far removed from the country-rock that Hillman helped shape, starting with the genre’s first effort, the Byrds’ 1968 “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album, and continuing with the Flying Burrito Brothers.

But instead of a return to the country-rock hybrid, Hillman regards the Desert Rose Band as a reassertion of his earliest musical roots in country and bluegrass. Before the Byrds formed in 1964, with Hillman playing electric bass, he had been a bluegrass mandolin player.

Desert Rose has its share of fans who have followed his work since the ‘60s, Hillman said, “but there’s a brand-new audience, people in their 50s to 70s who had no idea who the Byrds were, but who are hearing our songs on the radio and accepting them.”

The Desert Rose Band came together in 1985, when Dan Fogelberg recruited Hillman, banjo player Herb Pedersen, guitarist John Jorgenson (a longtime Orange County resident who has played for years in bluegrass bands at Disneyland) and bassist Bill Bryson to tour with him.

The group continued after the Fogelberg tour, and with the addition of drummer Steve Duncan and steel guitarist Jay Dee Maness, who played on “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” it debuted last year with a successful album of love songs that did justice to the complex, double-edged nature of relationships.

“Running,” besides its topical content, has several well-observed songs about relationships, including a wry run-through of Buck Owens’ “Hello Trouble” and John Hiatt’s humorous but pointed “She Don’t Love Nobody.”

The title song, by Hillman and Hill, brings rare depth and insight to the staple pop music theme of the ramblin’ man who can’t settle down into family life. Hillman’s character has a convincing reason for resisting the settled life--the character’s father, a man perplexed by family responsibilities, ultimately committed suicide. But the singer realizes that if he avoids the entanglements that proved fatal to his father, he also misses the same opportunity to nurture a family.

“I don’t want to dwell on that particular song,” Hillman said. “You’re dealing with your own life and things that have happened to you. It’s a personal statement of mine. It’s a very emotional thing.”

The character in the song doesn’t resolve his dilemma. But Hillman says he has established some clear priorities in his own life.

“I’m at the age where nothing is more important than my family,” he said. “What really is important is to have somebody to love and to come home to, somebody in my life who is more important than me.”

His main concerns as a father, he said, are “my ideals and values, (how) I instill that in my children, and anything I’ve learned, how can I help them with it.”

Hillman takes a certain patriarchal pride in his role as a Byrd in establishing a sound that still echoes clearly in the songs of such creative and successful rockers as Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and R.E.M.

“What I’m very proud of is the influence we left on other musicians. It’s a great thing that exceeds any money I ever made on it,” said Hillman, adding that Roger McGuinn, the Byrds’ singer and guitarist, deserves the biggest share of the credit for developing the distinctive, ringing folk-rock sound.

With the Desert Rose Band’s commitment to playing country music that speaks honestly about complex inner emotions and compelling social situations, Hillman remains an influence worth heeding.

The Desert Rose Band plays Monday at 7 and 10 p.m. at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. Tickets: $17.50. Information: (714) 549--1512.